RE: Veganism
March 25, 2026 at 4:01 pm
(This post was last modified: March 25, 2026 at 4:23 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(March 25, 2026 at 10:55 am)Angrboda Wrote: I think the self-defense example points up a salient problem with equating harm with damage if damage is justified or desired, then it becomes moot from a moral standpoint. Damage is only harm if it is both unwanted and unjustified, but both counts require a value judgment. Value judgments are inherently subjective. You do not determine desirability or justification by objective facts. Therefore, the harm standard is inherently subjective.
IDK about that, in my earlier example I offered the valid realist suggestion that harm done in self defense was still harm. Still not good. Still immoral. We do employ terms and concepts like necessary evil suggesting that even if something is desired and justified (in some other sense, I'm assuming) it can still be an item of moral concern, still be harm. At least on the face of it, a things harmfulness does not seem to be decided by it's desirableness or it's necessity.
A simple summation of the contemporary position here is that the harm standard is not itself subjective (or necessarily so) though harm consideration in practice may be and often is. As in, there is a fact of whether or not an action causes harm, but not all moral agents will be aware of that or those facts or agree to their logical consequences if they were. Ostensibly, a more thoughtful, consistent, and objective application of that standard might clear up muddy areas for us - which is what I suggest when we think about the ethics and alternatives to our current food production systems.
Bringing that back around to ethical veganism and livestock production. I'm interested in how many of us here believe that the harm to animals and the harm to the environment invoked are not objectivist statements? That it has not been or could not be quantified and demonstrated in the same way that any other fact we take to be an objective fact can be? It's just an opinion or the viewpoint of society in this moment that our management practices harm animals and the environment? Is that where we disagree, or is it something else?
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